Saturday, February 21, 2009

"You better run, you better take cover..."

"...where beer does flow and men chunder..."Land Down Under, band Men at Work

*retch* *chunder* *[insert vomit synonym of choice]*

I'm on a borrowed computer for now. I may be on borrowed time. :p

My mother had some heavy yard work done this morning in the backyard. She and I were looking at the finished yard after the men had left and she was telling me that we should never have to worry about weeds in the backyard again, because they had sprayed the whole place with...

Roundup. Roundup. Roundup.

Men sprayed my entire backyard with Roundup.

(I can smell and taste nasty chemicals now.)

This is a perfect example of how lack of knowledge and incomplete communication can kill. My mother never uses chemicals of any sort in her gardening, not even chemical fertilizer. Just...read....

I was horror-struck. Mom asked if I thought the Roundup would kill the ivy growing on the trees and I told her it might kill the entire tree too. I told her we might not have any living thing left there as a result of this spraying. We have all sorts of critters back there--turtles, scorpions (one crawled into my father's work boot one time), lizards, snakes, chipmunks, squirrels, and hundreds of birds. There's a family of raccoons next door. Maybe not anymore.

I'm ill, emotionally and physically ill.

Mom said that she told the man she didn't want anything poisonous back there. I told her that sure, he probably got all the poison ivy and poison oak. She said that no, she told him nothing poisonous. I asked if she told him no chemicals and she said...nothing.

This is going to trigger--and it has already begun--every symptom I ever have. Might create some new ones.

Roundup.

Please, for the love of the Earth and everything on it, don't buy or use Roundup. I believe it works by sterilizing the soil to a certain depth so that nothing can grow. I don't believe that dirt treated with Roundup can ever be rehabilitated to make it arable again. And then it gets into the ground water, and then animals drink it, and then...

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